The Touch Of A Friend
by Stormchilde
Summary: It started out as a one-shot, Harper's thoughts on his Maggog infestation but people threatened to steal my clones so I wrote more. Encourage the muses with a review, I'll try to add the rest of the crew soon.
1. Default Chapter

Title: The Touch of a Friend  
Author: Harper's Cat AKA Stormchilde  
Archive: Yes, just let me know where.  
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and make no profit from this story.  
Rating: G  
Setting/Season: Season 2  
Spoilers:   
Warnings: None, but you might want to have a Kleenex handy.  
Comment/Feedback: Don't forget to feed The Cat!  
Summary: Harper's thoughts after returning from the Magog world ship.

Harper

Touch me. Please just a small touch to let me know that you still care. I feel like I'm dead already. I walk around but no one sees me, they speak sometimes, hesitant as if they aren't sure if they should. They don't touch me anymore. No hugs from Beka, no small purple hands on my arm, tail around my waist. Even Tyr seems to avoid physical contact and Dylan has never touched me. Rommie won't even look me in the eyes anymore. I know it's my fault but can't you please cut me a little slack? I didn't mean to.  
Back on Earth we never touched the infected, it was a sure way to your own death. We always made the end quick for them. Don't touch them, just put them out of their misery. I remember Declan and Siobhan, their unnaturally still bodies lined up with the other victims of the Magog. Their blank faces and the fearful pleading looks in their eyes. I didn't understand it then but now I do. They just wanted one last caress, one tiny drop of love to speed them on their way to a better place.  
The inhibitor keeps the larvae from becoming too active but I can still feel them. It's the worst thing I could ever imagine. It's literally staring death in the face and waiting for it. The waiting and the knowledge of what's to come is so hard to bear. Rommie has no idea how hard it is for me to keep my promise to her. She can't fix me with words, even kind ones. Ignorance is bliss, I wish I didn't know how it will end but the images just won't go away. The memories of all the people I knew who died of this too. The agony they endured, the blood, the screams…  
I don't want to die alone. Beka? Trance? Come on, even Tyr would be alright.  
But it's Dylan who finds me. Who would have thought that our uptight- military- detachment captain would be the one. I bury my face in his shoulder, crying like a child. He pats my back awkwardly but that's okay, at least someone isn't afraid to touch me. At least I won't die without the touch of a friend.

Dylan

I've never been this close to someone who was infected by Magog. Not just this close physically, I mean this close emotionally. I've known Harper for a little over a year and as much as he annoys me, I am glad to have met him and to have him as a member of my crew.  
I don't know him as well as I should I guess but Harper's never still long enough to carry on an in depth conversation with. Even when he is, he's not real open about himself, I know that he's had a hard life growing up on Earth and that he's much stronger than he looks.  
Harper blames himself for all that's happened and this has put a strain on the relationship he has with Andromeda and Rommie.  
Other than a couple of outbursts he seems to be dealing with the infestation but it must be difficult for him to know what kind of death is waiting for him. I know everyone dies eventually but I can't imagine what it must be like to know when and how you are going to die and to be unable to change anything about it.  
He's too quiet and so is the rest of the crew. It's eerie how no one mentions it, everyone seems to tiptoe around the subject. I know he and Beka are as close as siblings but she has all the ridiculous fears that are common among this generation; they don't believe in touching the infected lest they become infected themselves. Harper seems to have accepted his fate, he works like a madman making upgrades and repairs, sleeping less than he ever did despite Trance's efforts to get him to rest and eat better.  
When he's working on something he has a look of intense concentration but sometimes I've come up on him and before he's aware of me I see the despair and the fear and then he puts on that mask of carefree smiles. I don't know what to do, would he even accept me trying to comfort him? I am his captain and we aren't exactly close friends and let's face it, men don't hug.  
Andromeda won't discuss Harper and I know Rommie is holding something back, she watches over him now more than ever. I feel like she's keeping a secret and I admit it hurts that she feels she can't trust me with it.  
Beka seems to walk around in a daze, she's competent in all her duties but it's obvious her mind is on other matters. She's impossible to carry on a conversation with, her attention drifts to other things she won't share.  
Trance is of course, frantic, trying to find something to help cure Harper. Her and Rev are almost constantly huddled over some experiment, looking for a cure or a treatment.  
Rev is obviously distressed but I don't know if it's over Harper or something else.  
Tyr is running laps around the ship without me, lifting weights and trying to stay busy. It's un-Neitchean to admit that he feels guilty that he was saved from a horrible death and Harper was not. 'Guilt is a wasted emotion' he once told me.  
I pace in my quarters unable to rest, unable to focus on anything constructive. I go for a walk around the ship and I am not surprised that my feet take me to the machine shop. It's quiet and I pause outside wondering if he's finally fallen asleep. Andromeda's hologram shimmers beside me.  
"He's wake." She informs me.  
The door opens and I go in. Harper is leaning against one of the workbenches, hands over his face, shoulders shaking with soft sobs. I swallow the lump in my throat, blink back tears of my own, cross the room and pull him into a hug. He is tense at first but then relaxes, head against my shoulder and I feel the dampness of his tears. I pat his back hoping that I am giving him some comfort.

Beka

I wish I didn't love him.  
If I never loved him, it wouldn't hurt so much to watch him dying right in front of me. Dear God, have I ever even told him that I love him? If I'd said it I'd remember, right? I don't know what to do, I mean he's dealing with it, right? He doesn't mention it, so maybe I shouldn't either. It's not like he needs to be reminded that he's got a belly full of death. God, I wish I could get that image out of my head! I don't want him to die like that, to suffer in agony and be eaten alive. BASTARDS! Why? Why? He's just a kid and he's had such a suck-ass life, why can't fate even grant him a less gruesome manner of dying?  
My hand hurts. I hold it up, my fingers are cramped into a fist and I realize that I probably just broke several bones when I punched the wall.  
I slide down, sitting on the deck with my back to the wall and let the tears come. The sounds of my weeping echoes all around the Maru.  
Empty echoes on an empty ship.

I scrub the tears away and stand up. Harper must be terrified and here I am, his best friend, hiding in the dark when I should be with him. I go to bathroom, wash my face and return to the Andromeda. I can hear Rommie as I near the machine shop, it sounds like she's arguing with someone.

"So what?" I hear Harper say. He sounds exhausted.

I turn the corner in time to see him walking away from Rommie. She is standing in the corridor with her hologram, both look angry, arms crossed and frowning at each other.

I push past her, not caring that I'm not gentle.

Rommie grabs my arm, "Let him go."

"Bite me." I growl. "Harper needs his friends with him." I glare at her, "I thought that would include you."

"He wants to be left alone, see him leaving?"

"Sometimes people walk away because they want to see if you care enough to follow." I shake free of her hand, "I care, don't you?"

"He said we wanted to be left alone." Rommie insists.

"And sometimes what people say and what they mean are two different things."

Rommie

We watch Beka as she runs after Harper. That seems to be all we do lately, watch. We watch him, he is never completely alone. He's sullen, angry that we're watching him all the time, even when he engages privacy mode. We watch Harper slowly dying and we are afraid. The most powerful warship in the universe and I am afraid of one scruffy, helpless human. I am afraid of what he'll do to me when he dies. He would never deliberately hurt me, this I know, but without him we will be … less.

I have talked with myself and we have discussed alternatives if we are left without an engineer. It's only logical that we be prepared for any contingency but I feel a peculiar emptiness inside me when I think about continuing without him. I'm angry that he would do himself harm, furious that he has tried on several occasions. It's not logical that he should choose such a course of action. I understand it though; I do possess the capability to analyze emotional responses. That's why I cry for him, for me I cry because I'm weak. I don't know what to do, I analyze the situation, conduct scenarios of all the responses and nothing feels right. It's as if a part of me, a vital part, is missing and I can't bear the sensation of that barrenness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Trance**

I haven't slept. I can't. I lay awake tracing every possible timeline, every possible action and I can't find a single one that doesn't end with me watching my best friend die. I try to stay positive while I help Rev but I already know the outcome of every test we do, it will all end in failure. With so many possibilities why can't a find a good one, a happy one?

I can't look at Harper, every time I do I see his future, pain and death overwrites everything we have right here and now and I can't bear it. When he looks at me I can see that he believes that I will somehow pull the magic out of the hat and save him and that tears my heart into little pieces knowing that I have failed … or that I will fail.

Taking care of him has been a trial from the day we met. Because he's always in the middle of things I've had to learn to read, to shift the possibilities so much faster than I ever did before. I knew this wouldn't be easy but I never dreamed it would be so very, very hard.

**Tyr**

I can't care. I won't care, I mustn't care. He's just a little scrap of a kludge and his death or his continued existence should have no affect on me. But it does. How can a creature so small, so annoying threaten everything that I have created? How can something I should despise matter so much to me that I would mold my desires to include it? What is it about this child who shares but the most miniscule portion of genetics with my kind inspire me? Certainly he has proved his courage, his tenacity but these can be called the reflection of stubbornness which is not a desirable quality. And yet I feel for him as I might a brother or I shudder to admit, a child of my own. I would not have him die like this, better that he should have fallen in combat with these creatures than to endure the agony he faces daily. I must pretend a little longer that I have not a care as to his health, hide that I despair of his inevitable death. And so I run and it takes me nowhere, not even from the chidings of my own mind that warns me I should never have allowed myself to care.

**Rev**

I can feel his despair and his pain. I can smell and hear the young of my kind as they kill him slowly, a little more each day. I hear the high pitched screams of the larvae and it cuts across my nerves like a hot knife. I believe that Harper can hear them too, though we have always believed humans to have inferior hearing I have witnessed him tilt his head as though listening and then I hear the children of my kind. Their voices grow louder each day as Harper's light diminishes. I know the medicine will not help for much longer just as I know that the pain he feels grows stronger. I also know that he takes the medicine not only to kill the pain but because the motion of the children inside distresses him. Divine how could this be? Why is it that those who deserve your blessings most are the ones who seem to get the least? I am sorry if I seem to question Your divine will but must my punishment also include the guilt of knowing that my kind are once again to blame for the torture and death of someone dear to me?

The child Trance is working herself near to death trying to find some manner of cure and I know it is taking a toll on her trying to stay positive when we both know there is no happy ending to this story.

Grant me the serenity oh Divine that I may accept your will.


End file.
